Despite books, exhibitions, contemporary designers and numerous posts on this site proving that knitwear is alive and kicking, some people still think it's a boring art. Yet there have been not only fashion designers, but also artists who proved through their works that knitting can lead to the creation of amazing pieces that, though unwearable, hide in their yarns, stitches and craft very important meanings.
Some of you may for example remember Emily Bates' 1994 series “Three Dresses, Blonde, Brunette, Redhead” or her “Depilator” piece (currently exhibited at Paisley Museum, as part of the "Equals" exhibition - until 21st October), all of them made with handspun and machine knitted human hair.
In her impossible dresses, Bates, who graduated in textiles from Glasgow School of Art in 1993, focused on the dichotomic meaning of the medium - human hair - conceived at the same time as attractive and repellent.
In Bates' work, hair also evokes Victorian mourning jewellery and fairytale heroines such as Rapunzel. “Depilator” in particular references female grooming and other socially-conditioned female body constraints, as well as Mary Magdalene.
Before Bates, another maverick knitter - enigmatic artist Angus McPhee - created unique pieces.
Born in Nettlehole in 1916, McPhee lived as a young man on the island of South Uist.
Here he learnt how to make ropes and horse harnesses from the marram grass (muirineach) on the island (crofters on the islands would have known how to make ropes out of grass or straw that could be used for different purposes).
Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946 (he had served with the Lovat Scouts and garrisoned in the Faroe Islands during World War II), he spent the rest of his life in Craig Dunain Hospital, near Inverness. While being hospitalised, he fell completely silent for more than 50 years.
McPhee mainly created - using only his fingers - garments such as vests, scarves, mufflers, jumpers, coats, hats (top-hats, hunting-fishing bonnets, tricorne hats...), caps, shoes, cornucopia-shaped pouches and harnesses.
He would weave found vegetation, such as grass, sheep's wool picked from barbed wire fences, and beech leaves (apparently he made the undergarments with wool and all the other objects with grass and leaves), and usually hid the pieces under the bushes of the hospital grounds.
In a way it's perfectly understandable why weaving and knitting became a form of personal expression for him: hand-knitting evokes personal memories of childhood, women working in a domestic environment creating clothes out of necessity and intertwining in their pieces also love.
McPhee's hand-knitting and weaving could therefore be considered as metaphors for something else, as mediums to recover what he had lost in his childhood and youth or as constant quests for warmth, comfort or protection.
Some of his pieces (most of them were destroyed as, twice a year, the hospital gardeners would would clean the estate and burn what was found on the grounds, including pruned branches, leaves and also McPhee's weavings) will be exhibited together with some replicas of his works by Joanne Kaar, at the Art Extraordinary Gallery during the Pittenweem Arts Festival (28th July - 5th August).
To know more about Angus McPhee you can also read the books Angus McPhee: Weaver of Grass by Joyce Laing, an art therapist who discovered him and rediscovered the techniques he used recreating some of his garments (exhibited in art galleries and employed in theatre productions) or Roger Hutchinson's The Silent Weaver or watch the documentary Hidden Gifts: The Mystery of Angus MacPhee by Nick Higgins.
For Angus McPhee weaving and knitting weren't only ways to express himself but also tools to gain back his health and mental equilibrium and it would be interesting to see where these traditional craft skills would take us if we started to look at them not as long forgotten and boring arts to create necessarily wearable pieces, but as ways to enhance our own well-being in our very often pointlessly chaotic lives.
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